What began as a way to pass time during child development sessions has turned into a regular meeting for mothers to connect with their daughters. HISG supports learning and therapy sessions for children with physical and developmental disabilities in Yemen. A new development in the project is that the mothers who brought their children to the learning center wanted something to do, and asked if they could learn to knit. The group met diligently each week to learn new techniques and finish their projects. This new activity has given the mothers a new sense of accomplishment, a shared identity with the other knitters, and a venue to spend time with their daughters. The original scope of the project had nothing to do with knitting, yet the team in Yemen made it work because they understood that they had a unique chance to build a new sense of community around a new purpose. Learn more about this project and others like it at

Here’s a tentmaking course in Australia, Feb 20-24, hosted by Canberra International Church. AZTEM, Global Opportunities and TENT are working together to bring this training down under. It’s a two week curriculum on the realities of using your profession or business skills in closed countries to bring the Gospel to those yet to hear. The GO Equipped Course will not teach you how to do your work or how to run your business, but it will help you to integrate your faith with your profession and business. The focus is on ministry development and preparing well before you go. There will also be training for trainers on the last day of the course.

The Global Congress on Business as Mission, BAM, will be a unique gathering of leaders and practitioners from all continents. It is the culmination of a yearlong think tank process engaging hundreds people from all over the world, addressing key strategic issues related to Business as Mission. Over 30 national, regional and international working groups will present cutting edge BAM practices and models and bring strategic recommendations during the Congress. The Global Congress will provide a unique ‘one-stop shop’ to meet and interact with BAM leaders from all over the world, on an unprecedented scale. It will be held in Chiang Mai, Thailand – April 25-28, 2013. For more information, visit:

We’re grateful this week for a financial gift from a project consultant with Integra Ventures USA. Our Brigada friend is a non-residential missionary working in the country of Bulgaria. He does 3 one-month trips a year, focusing on Small to Medium Enterprise development – or “Planting Islands of Integrity in Eastern Europe.” To learn more, please browse to

In addition to the high-tech matching process, MissionNext has implemented a strong high-touch approach through the development of a coaching component designed to make personal contact with all who apply, as well as helping mission agency partners find good candidates.

NewVo business is a network of entrepreneurs and business executives whose goal is to mobilize businesses for the gospel among the least-reached peoples of the world. Their first conference will bring together current and future Kingdom Business practitioners to explore the logistics of starting and maintaining Christian-led businesses. It will be held Nov 1-3, 2012 at the Simpsonwood Conference Center near Atlanta, GA. For registration and more information please go to:

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A Brigada participant with deep business-as-missions experience highlighted it this past week (Thanks AW!) and it profoundly illustrates the surge of missionary-sending help from areas previously considered missionary-receiving locations. The trouble is — I’m not sure we’ve figured out yet exactly how to work together. I fear that some of the amazing saints of God, ready for deployment for the ends of the earth might reach the end of their respective ropes before we end the Matthew 28:19-20 task. In the process, I fear we will have lost momentum, along with the synergy and force of our mutual combined efforts.

I know, in some ways, this is not a new question. In many ways, the Lausanne conference in Cape town hoped to spawn the formation of international coalitions that would generate multi-national sharing of resources, training, and more. I guess, on a grass roots level, I fear that many came home from Cape town and then, as the music faded, many went back to work on business as usual.

So let’s get very specific: Apart from word-of-mouth, how do competent and trustworthy individuals from around the world meet hard-working senders, enablers, and teammates from sending nations on the other side of the globe? Have we formed the infrastructure necessary to sustain a concerted global effort? That’s the question — and to me, an answer is long overdue.

Do you know of such infrastructure? If you do, would you take a moment to make a comment about it in the “Comment” section below this item on the web? (Note: If you mention more than one URL link in your comment, it might not appear immediately, since it will likely need to be moderated.) Thank you, in advance, for any ideas, resources, or directions you might provide.

Either way — Let’s join together with many others to pray that God will empower us all, as a globe, with wisdom, humility, and resources — so that, together, we might finish the task of Matthew 28:19-20.

Anda Leadership needs your help. They’re finding quite a bit of information on emerging markets, multinational corporations, etc. However, they’ve had a harder time finding good statistical information about small businesses and entrepreneurial organizations in emerging markets. They’d like to be able to project income and then report on results vs. current levels of production and revenue, along with economic impact. Have you researched this and/or anything similar? If the resource is publicly available, please post by clicking on Comment below, so all can learn. If the research is private, feel free to contact Howard at

ehamlandhotmailcom

In addition, they are seeking trainers and others to assist in their work. Visit

Want to learn more about “Work as Worship” (some would call it Business as Mission or BAM)? What could be better than a top-25 list of books about the subject? Build a library on your Kindle or otherwise. Work as Worship guru, Justin Forman, lists such works as “Our Souls at Work,” by Mark Russell, “Business With Soul,” by Michael Cardone, and “God is at Work,” by Ken Eldred. Check out the complete list at…

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Let GO/TENT help you to develop your ministry plan by attending one of their Tentmaking Business as Mission courses. Their course fees are some of the lowest anywhere for a 4.5 day intensive, two week curriculum. An extensive course book, a course CD/USB full of post course resources and delicious meals are all included. At the suggestion of previous course alumni from Oregon, they are now running the first ever course in Portland in February. The following week there is a course across the continent in Fort Myers, Florida. Spring time finds the course in Bergen, Norway, at the TENT headquarters building. This course is filling up earlier each year, so register early. Immediately after this course, the teachers head to Finland for yet another course. In the fall is the third annual course in Germany. One of these should fit your schedule. Contact GO at

The Akademie für Weltmission in Korntal Germany is hosting the second annual tentmaking business as mission course October 31-November 3 2011. The focus of four intense days is on ministry development and cultural adaptation. All teaching is in English. Space is limited so please register early. For more information and the course outline check out this link

The Akademie für Weltmission in Korntal Germany is hosting the second annual tentmaking business as mission course October 31-November 3 2011. The focus of four intense days is on ministry development and cultural adaptation. All teaching is in English. Space is limited so please register early. For more information and the course outline check out this link

Once again the team at Global Opportunities and TENT Norway are teaming up for events in California, Florida, Germany, Washington, Vancouver BC and Norway. Attendance at courses is hitting all time highs, with some late registrants being turned away due to limited class size. Their training focuses on developing critical ministry skills for both professionals and business people in challenging cultures. GO Research clearly shows that most professionals and business people seeking to build His kingdom in restricted nations lack the needed ministry skills to be effective in sharing their faith and in planting house churches. Let GO/TENT help you to develop your ministry plan by attending their events or contacting them directly via email. They’re on the web at…

Don Nordstrom helped start and grow PRI (since 1987), a BAM company with over 10 operations in China. Don was father and greatest mentor to PRI’s Chairman, Dwight Nordstrom. Don finished well. Also the Lord graciously protected Don’s legacy at the time of his death. Policemen and doctors say that Don was a “hero” – he died from a massive heart attack (unconscious in less than 2 seconds) while driving his car with Dwight’s 2 small children in the back seat. Although the car was travelling an estimated 50MPH (80.5 KPH) on a downhill section of a major 4-lane road in California, Don quickly began to put on the brakes and then went unconscious. For several minutes, even while others were performing CPR on him in the car, and with Don unconscious sitting in the driver’s seat, his foot was firmly on the brake with the car engine running and still in “Drive”. The police said they needed to pry it from the brake to get him out of the car. Even in his death he and the Lord were protecting others. Join us in giving thanks for Don Nordstrom.

BAM Journey is a 6-month to 1-year participatory, immersion program that seeks to equip and mobilize people with business backgrounds, education and skills to be part of BAM in the world and East Asia. Participants are full-time language and culture students, then weekly meet together to read, discuss and understand Biblical foundations and BAM principles (reading a series of books). Then roughly every other week the facilitator takes them to visit practitioners here in-country. Once a semester they go on a longer trip to another province to observe and interact with practitioners. For each semester the participants interact with 10-15 practitioners. Participants then write up case studies on these visits.

In this manner the participants get a healthy immersion combination of learning a language and culture and then reading, discussing, praying, observing, asking/interacting and writing about all aspects of BAM. The goal is that participants get a real-life view of BAM and discern how they might be part of it all. To date over a third of the participants have then been placed in working internships and jobs in-country. BAM Journey is now in its third year. A further write-up on this program is available at: